Bill Gates Targets AOL

NM Insider Report ^

[rs79bm]

Bill Gates has vowed to destroy AOL.

That's what an insider close to AOL Time Warner tells NewsMax, explaining its recent woes and barrage of negative press coverage.

AOL Time Warner has taken a pummeling in share value, though its stock price is up almost 100% from its recent bottom of $8 a share.

Still, execs at AOL Time Warner say most of their woes and negative press coverage has been manipulated by Bill Gates and Microsoft.

Gates is said to still be furious with AOL Time Warner Chairman Steve Case, who had AOL work up front during the Justice Dept. effort to break up Microsoft.

During the Microsoft break-up proceedings, Case and AOL told the court that it chose Microsoft's browser over rival Netscape because of Microsoft's market dominance - a factor that gave weight to government arguments Microsoft had a virtual monopoly in operating systems for computers and the Web.

Since then Gates has vowed to bring down AOL and destroy it.

The AOL insider tells NewsMax that Microsoft basically "owns the Wall Street Journal" because of its heavy ad spending, and explains why the paper and other media outlets have targeted AOL Time Warner.


In Other News:

China's President Calls Gates "Arrogant"

Bill Gates may be the world's richest man (Forbes places his wealth at $43 billion), but it was not enough to impress the President of China, Jiang Zemin.

An American businessman recently visited China and met privately with Jiang.

When Gates' name came up, Jiang was said to have become livid.

Was China's top communist angry with America's top capitalist, Bill Gates?

Hardly.

Our source quoted Jiang, in broken English, calling Gates an "arrogant SOB."

Jiang said he found Gates to be pompous and disrespectful. Jiang complained that Gates didn't even bother to wear a tie when he came to meet him.

[RWG]

A tie is a tool for someone to lead you around.

[Bush2000]

Umm, then on what basis are you concluding that it sucks?

Several hundred million users of IE can't be wrong.

[Bush2000]

Our source quoted Jiang, in broken English, calling Gates an "arrogant SOB."

Jiang rolls over students protesting in Tiannanmen with tanks ... and Gates is the "arrogant SOB" ... Sheezus, people, put this in perspective.

[I_Love_My_Husband]

You can't use netscape/mozilla in the msn community chats. Nor can you use Mac.

Nothing like YOUR uninformed opinion, eh?

[I_Love_My_Husband]

Gates also loves Dimocraps.

I believe that Case and his wife are actually Repubs.

[Oberon]

Hmmm. AOL vs. Time-Warner. The only problem I see is that they can't both lose.

[snerk!]

[Sungirl]

I can understand why Gates hates AOL...but why do some of you people in here hate it? I hated it when I had a regular phone line...but DSL helped.

[There's millions of'em]

" I can understand why Gates hates AOL...but why do some of you people in here hate it?"

Just my opinion:

They lie

They cheat

They steal

They are arrogant in the extreme

Advanced "financial engineering" on SEC filings

Probably crushed more companies than any other company

[Dudesdad]

Several billion flies eat poop too. And I will not even discuss what the french eat.

I use Mozilla on Windows 98 that has had IE and the whole MS html engine removed. Boy, is it fast and dependable. I use a product that is called 98Lite that allows you to dis-integrate the browser from the O/S.

It's all about Freedom.

[aquawrench]

Netscape Sux. I used to be a big Netscape backer. It has taken four years of surfing both to give my nod to the evil empire. Netscape jumped the shark with #6.

[DaGman]

I cannot believe this is now "history".

Once upon a time there was this newfangled thing from the NCSA called Mosaic. It was the very first GUI browser. Old timers will remember the old text based Lynx browsers prior to Mosaic.

A bunch of guys that worked on Mosaic left NCSA and started Netscape with the Navigator browser which was basically a commercial version of Mosaic. They basicly took Mosaic to the next level. Navigator 1.0 was some finetuning of Mosaic. Navigator 2.0 involved a new innovation called Tables. I believe it was during the development of Navigator 2.0 that the Navigator project was given the name "Mozilla".

Somewhere along the way, Microsoft came out with an incredibly crappy browser called Explorer. It remained inferior until about the point of Navigator 4.0 and Explorer 4.0 when IMHO they were about equal.

I remember when AOL made the announcement that they had chosen Navigator as its browser of choice for its use. I was shocked when I learned a short few weeks later that AOL would use Explorer instead because Explorer was still a crappy browser. It wasn't until the MS trial that I found out how Gates turned the screws on AOL to not use Navigator.

While I was in graduate school in the early 90's and Navigator was the dominant browser, we explored different business uses for the Internet. We talked about how wonderful it would be to be able to display a Powerpoint presentation or an Excel spreadsheet in a browser. However, we concluded that hell would freeze over before Gates allowed this to happen with Navigator. Therefore, Netscape was going down a one-way dead end street. Ultimately, there would be no future for Netscape. As it turned out, that's exactly what happened.

Netscape went belly up and was bought by AOL so yes, AOL is now also Netscape.

What I don't know but would like to is what is up with the new Mozilla. It appears to be a "Navigator 7.0". Is this correct?

[SpaceBar]

Netscape is inferior to internet explorer...

Perhaps you should read this.

[CWRWinger]

Since then Gates has vowed to bring down AOL and destroy it.

Go to it, Mr. Gates. And throw salt on the ground where AOL use to stand.

[John Lenin]

Can I help Bill ? I despise that pinhead who built it. Glad Time is taking a bath on the merger,if we are all lucky, they will go bankrupt.

[Sungirl]

Just my opinion:
They lie
They cheat
They steal
They are arrogant in the extreme
Advanced "financial engineering" on SEC filings

Name one company that doesn't.

[my right]

I, like so many people went with AOL when I first bought my first pc 3 yrs. ago. But I soon found out what an octopus I was paying a premium price for. When you have to buy a program to rid yourself of an ISP., it really pis*** you off. I hate AOL and would side with Billy G. on this debate anytime. It would be interesting to see a poll of Freepers on this subject.

[Cicero]

Next to Steve Case, who was one of bill clinton's friends & enablers, Bill Gates is a nice guy.

AOL deserves whatever it gets, and so, frankly, does Time-Warner/CNN.

Netscape/Mozilla was my browser of choice for many years. But they fell apart, got taken over by some of the worst software developers in the world, and now AOL is in the process of driving a stake through their heart. They are working on a new AOL Communicator which will effectively kill Netscape if it goes through as planned.

[SamAdams76]

Here's a time where we can all root for Microsoft.

[I_Love_My_Husband]

Read that link.

I used to be like you. I was a huge fan of IE. Then I married a computer guy.

I started using his MAC, and Mozilla.

I'm a convert.

NO POP UP ADS!!!!!!

It's amazing.

[John Lenin]

Someone name all th operating systems out there. It's got be something like 6 or more. What monopoly ? It's called choice, people choose MS till someone comes up with something better. Let the Free Market decide the winners and losers, not a bunch of liberal commie lawyers.